Monthly Archives: May 2012

Leading small business lobby group urges federal government to come clean on EI reforms

OTTAWA — Canada’s leading voice for small businesses is calling on the Conservative government to come clean on planned changes to the employment insurance system to help ease some of the “mass hysteria” spreading across the country.

The Harper government is facing growing backlash on multiple fronts — but earning praise from some sectors — about its plans to reform the EI system by redefining what is deemed “suitable employment” and how Canadians will qualify for benefits.

For the second consecutive day Wednesday, federal ministers tried to reassure Canadians needing EI that they won’t be forced to relocate to receive benefits, but seemingly caused more confusion about what type of jobs people will be expected to take once the changes are implemented in the coming months.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business — which represents more than 109,000 small-business owners across the country — believes “tons of games are being played” with the EI system, and agrees with the government that changes are needed to “nudge (people) back into the workforce” and help fill labour shortages.

However, the CFIB is echoing opposition party demands for the Conservatives — particularly Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Human Resources Minister Diane Finley — to finally explain what sort of overhaul they have planned for the EI system.

“It’s time for Flaherty and Finley to put forward what they’re planning to do because there is a bit of mass hysteria over this that I think is completely overplayed at the moment,” CFIB senior vice-president Dan Kelly said Wednesday.

“The government is right to be flagging this, but it’s a little past time now for them to actually put on the record what they’re planning to do.”

Kelly said his hunch is the government may look at an “intensity system” where Ottawa slowly trims benefits for people who make repeated EI claims.

The Conservative government says it’s using its sweeping budget bill to remove “disincentives” for people on employment insurance to take jobs, while Flaherty insists “there is no bad job.”

Kelly said the finance minister’s comments on there being no such thing as a bad job “resonate very well with small businesses.”

However, the government’s messaging and proposed reforms have opposition parties worried unemployed Canadians will lose their EI benefits unless they reluctantly accept jobs for which they are overqualified or in regions in which they don’t live.

The federal budget bill currently before the House of Commons gives cabinet the power to define what is considered “suitable employment” — which could affect whether a person qualifies for EI and the benefits they are paid.

A definition of what is deemed suitable employment will be announced in the coming months, likely after the bill passes.

On Wednesday, junior finance minister Ted Menzies promised that “no job seeker will be asked to relocate” and that they’ll only be expected to find jobs within their broader skill set.

In an effort to allay concerns, Menzies also provided some examples of what the government views as suitable employment.

“A mining company in Newfoundland is looking to hire 1,500 people in St. John’s, Newfoundland, through the temporary foreign-worker program. There are 32,500 people (in Newfoundland) looking for work right now. That is why we are trying to make EI more effective to help these mining companies get people to employ,” Menzies said in the House of Commons.

“Another example I will give: Nova Scotia’s recent shipbuilding contract will create over 15,000 jobs over the next 30 years, and the provincial government is already talking about importing workers. At this point there are 45,000 Nova Scotians looking for work.”

But Liberal leader Bob Rae said those examples are ludicrous and suggest workers from all different backgrounds will be forced into jobs that are inappropriate and outside people’s areas of expertise.

“They’re taking away protections that have historically been there before and in the minister’s own answers you see how absurd it is,” Rae told reporters.

“As if you can turn a 40-year-old, 50-year-old woman who’s working as a seasonal worker into a pipefitter working in a mine or a pipefitter working in a ship plant. I mean people have to get real here.”

Justin Bieber’s DNA: Wanna buy some?

No. Not really. You think the concept is harebrained, crass, and dishonest?

Fine, but if you can get past that, then look no further than the Justin Bieber DNA pendant that a Canadian company called celebritygene.com is selling.

According to the “head DNA scientist” of the above mentioned company, Ryan Lehto:

“We obtained his hair DNA due to popular demand and because we like that he is Canadian and how he went from YouTube to an international superstar!”

Excuse the editorial here, but I’m sure the company could care less that Bieber is a fellow Canadian.

First of all, the company is simply using an over-exploited teen’s image to pull on the heart strings of little girls everywhere for their own personal financial gain. Secondly, the Beebs isn’t the most accessible teenager around. Just how did this company obtain his hair? Do we even want to know? Thirdly, the pendant is selling for a cool $120. How on earth did they arrive at such a ludicrous figure? Do they have no sense of what other cheap, worthless crap retails for these days? Maybe three easy payments of $9.99, sure but 120 bucks… That’s a bit rich.

According to the company, “each DNA pendant will come with a silver box chain and a certificate of authenticity.”

Problem solved: I was slightly worried that innocent, albeit slightly naive, little girls were about to get duped out of their hard-earned allowances. But last time I checked, a certificate of authenticity from celebritygene.com is all but infallible. I mean, come on, look at their website, it clearly screams credibility. They have stock photos posted of beakers, test-tubes, and everything.

Ugh…

The company also claims to have DNA pendant’s from Princess Diana, Elvis, and probably Father Christmas, that is, if you’re willing to pay good money for it.

NDP road show giving Canadians a voice on budget

OTTAWA — Shot down by the Tory majority at every turn in its quest to have the omnibudget bill broken up for better scrutiny, the NDP is taking its concerns on the road in the hopes public outrage will be enough to effect change.

On Wednesday, the party hosted the first in a series of public consultations on the 400-plus page budget that includes sweeping environmental reforms as well as changes to everything from immigration policy to old age security which have drawn widespread criticism.

The Tories refused to split it into at least five parts so Parliamentarians could examine it thoroughly in committee.

The first session kicked off in Ottawa with testimony from a university law professor as well as representatives from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the National Council of Welfare and Democracy Watch.

It will continue Thursday with a number of environmental experts, medical experts and seniors groups.

Hearings are also planned for Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Regina and Vancouver.

The official Opposition has also launched a new website and social media campaign designed to raise awareness about what they’ve dubbed the “Trojan horse bill.”

The government seems scared of oversight and of public scrutiny,” House Leader Nathan Cullen said.

“If the government won’t let us do our job in parliament then we have to take it outside. One way or another we are going to ensure that Canadians know what this government is trying to keep behind closed doors.”

While the Tory majority has made it tough for the opposition to win battles in the House of Commons, Cullen has suggested public opinion can go a long way and has pointed to the outrage over Bill C-30, the internet surveillance bill, as an example.

Media reports this week have suggested the bill was quietly shelved in the wake of widespread outrage over privacy which included a pair of rabid Twitter feeds that directly targeted Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

That said, Toews assured Wednesday the bill was, in fact, not dead.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair nonetheless promised the NDP would resort to tactics such as extra-Parliamentary consultations as a way of giving Canadians a voice so long as the Tories continue stifling debate.

Ashton Eaton heads to Jerome Track Classic after Vogue cover shoot

Ashton Eaton, top ranked decathlete in the world, will hurdle over supermodels on the beach for Vogue Olympic cover shoot before he heads north to the Harry Jerome Track Classic on June 10th at Swangard Stadium. He is photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming issue of Vogue magazine. Check out the video

Alves’s absence will leave Barcelona without a presence on the right flank. Though he can excel defensively, Alves is more of an asset offensively, creating chances from outside the box by knocking the ball in to strikers such as Lionel Messi.

Losing these three men makes Barcelona extremely thin on defence. Like they have throughout the season, they’ll have to depend on a possession game, hoping to goodness that they don’t make a mistake and allow the Basques into their zone.

Skechers Shape-Ups: Kim Kardashian duped you badly

You know, the one where she’s scantily clad in a gym, teasing her personal trainer and talking about how she wouldn’t need to work out anymore because she got a new pair of Skechers Shape-Ups? “Bye bye trainer, hello Shape-Ups?”

Just in case you didn’t know, she was feeding you a hot, steamy pile of bullshit.

“Skechers’ unfounded claims went beyond stronger and more toned muscles,” said David Vladeck, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in the statement. “The company even made claims about weight loss and cardiovascular health.”

The story goes back to 2009, when Skechers introduced Shape-Ups, shoes that were uniquely designed with an arch on the sole. The shoes allegedly helped tone your gluteus maximus (that’s your posterior), tighten your core, and increase your cardiovascular activity.

Skechers boosted its message by broadcasting TV commercials featuring the endorsement of chiropractor Dr. David Gautreau, who cited an “independent clinical study” that wasn’t factual and hid the fact that he was married to a Skechers executive.

Skechers later put out television ads featuring Kardashian and Brooke Burke, whose ads claimed that “the newest way to burn calories and tone and strengthen muscles was to tie their Shape-up shoe laces.”

The most staggering fact of this story? People who got duped into believing this nonsense will actually get refunds.

$40 million of the settlement will go to the FTC, while $5 million of that pot will go to U.S. states so they can refund the less discerning consumers.

The lesson in all this? There’s no shortcut to fitness. You want to look like Kim Kardashian? Eat well, go to the gym, and do a lot of squats. The Abtronic didn’t help your core, and neither will a garish pair of shoes.

(Full disclosure: I own a pair of Skechers Shape-Ups. They’re good for walking and nothing else.)

It is called employment insurance for a reason. Well, the employment part is a little hard to figure out. It used to be called unemployment insurance, meaning it insured you against unemployment. But at some point under the Liberals (you remember them) the name was changed to employment insurance. As if it were intended to insure recipients against the risk they might be, however temporarily, employed.

Whatever its name, however, the program cannot remotely be described as insurance. With most sorts of insurance, the premiums you pay are adjusted, not only in line with the benefits to be paid out in the unfortunate event of (insert ghastly fate here), but also with the risk of such a calamity: the higher the risk, the higher the premium.

Compare, on the other hand, how employment insurance works. If, say, the fire insurance company were to discover that the house you had insured with it tended to burst into flames at regular intervals — not once or twice, but every year at about the same time — I’d guess it would have one or two questions to ask of you. At the very least, it would demand that you pay a higher premium. It might even cancel the contract. And it would be entirely unpersuaded by any explanation that began: “Yes, but you see, where I live all the houses are made of straw.”

Yet that is exactly what happens with employment insurance. There are parts of this country where it is common for people to draw EI every single year. Yet not only do these workers and their employers pay the same premiums as those with less frequent incidence of unemployment — compared with workers in other parts of the country, they are eligible for longer payout periods, in return for fewer weeks’ work.

So no, the federal government is not wrong, in principle, to want to reform this system. It is crying out for reform, and has been for decades. When Atlantic Canadian premiers (for yes, that is one of the parts of the country we are talking about) protest that employment insurance is essential to maintain workers in seasonal industries — when the premier of P.E.I. notes that “in January in Prince Edward Island we are not growing potatoes and we’re not catching lobsters” — they are only confirming the program’s malign effects.

Yes, potatoes and lobsters are “two of P.E.I.’s largest industries,” as the premier points out. But they would not employ as many people as they do now were it not for EI. As important, other industries in the province, with more stable employment records — industries that do hire people in January — would employ more. The system subsidizes jobs in seasonal industries, that is, at the expense of jobs in other industries.

Though workers in seasonal or unstable industries draw more benefits than do workers in other industries, they and their employers pay the same premiums. Workers and firms in seasonal industries thus pay less than they should, based on their use of the system, while workers and firms in more stable industries pay more than they should. To the extent that the latter pay higher premiums than they might otherwise, it raises costs to employers (and lowers take-home pay for workers), resulting in fewer people being employed in those industries. And vice versa.

Any serious reform of EI, then, would start with experience-rating of premiums, at least on the employer side. It would also look at the unfairness of paying workers different amounts based solely on which part of the country they live in. In short, it would put the insurance back in employment insurance.

Is that what the federal government is proposing? No. At least, not so far as anyone can tell. It’s difficult to know what it has in mind. Like virtually everything else in the government’s agenda, its plans for EI are buried in the elephantine omnibus budget bill, an opaque provision stripping certain rules from the EI legislation and giving cabinet the power to make new rules by regulation — that is, without consulting Parliament.

Generally speaking, EI recipients are required to take a job if it comes up. Under the old rules, EI recipients were permitted nevertheless to turn down jobs that involved unsafe working conditions, or that paid much lower wages than they had been earning. A university professor, in other words, is not obliged to sling fries at McDonalds.

Would they be under the new rules, whenever the government gets around to drafting them? Again, all is opaque. But the finance minister, Jim (“the only bad job is not having a job”) Flaherty, certainly seemed to suggest they might.

Again, the question to ask is: does this fit with insurance principles? To take up our fire insurance analogy, it is as if, rather than reimburse you the full value of your house, the insurance company were to pay you only for a small apartment. That’s fine, if that’s all that you agreed to — or paid for. But is that what EI’s “customers” agreed to?

Given the program’s compulsory nature, it’s hard to say. Perhaps there should be an option: pay a higher premium, and be pickier about the jobs you’ll take, or pay less, and take what’s offered. That does not appear to be the government’s intention. But as I say, I’m guessing.

Whatever the Conservatives have up their sleeve, however, it does not look like a comprehensive plan to reform EI. Rather, it’s what they can get away with, for now. Stealth politics, as usual.

World’s oldest backpacker keeps on moving

I don’t know if there actually is a Guinness Book of World Records designation for the world’s oldest backpacker, but I can’t imagine there are many people older than Keith Wright who is gallivanting around the world at the age of 95.

It is perhaps not shocking to learn he is from Australia, a country which seems to produce its fair share of backpackers.

His message to other retired folks is to put down their playing cards, get off their duffs and explore the world. It’s a good message for people of any age.

My belief is that if you are fit and able to travel independently, it is the best way to see as much as of the world as you want.

Years ago while backpacking in Brazil, I met a similar character from the U.S. He was a retired widower and was roaming the globe. He was a navy veteran and spoke of sleeping in hammocks aboard navy ships so he felt right at home in the remote parts of Brazil where sleeping in hammocks is pretty common.

I only hope that when I’m 95, I’m healthy enough to travel independently. But first I have to make it to 95.

Senior citizen beaten — then charged?

There’s no accounting, goes the old saying, for stupid. Truer words were never said. No amount of legislation, however well intentioned, can cure it.

For instance: Consider the case of Marian Andrzejewski, a 74-year-old Polish-born retiree, a painter by trade (canvases, not houses), who called Ottawa 911 from his public housing unit after he was punched out by two young men, following a dispute with a neighbour.

The neighbour, a woman named Gale Doherty, is reported by the Ottawa Citizen to be an admitted crack addict with a lengthy criminal record. Her prior offenses include cheque forgery, theft and obstructing police.

Andrzejewski, who emigrated to Canada after living through the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland, has no criminal record. With me so far?

Doherty told police, when they arrived at the apartment complex in response to Mr. Andrzejewski’s call for help, that he had held her against her will, sexually assaulted her and pulled her hair.

He in turn said she’d come to his unit ostensibly to help him clean it, then offered sex for cash. When he demurred she started kicking his stuff. He grabbed her by the hands and led her out.

Minutes later the two men, one of whom turned out to be Doherty’s son, kicked in the senior citizen’s door and proceeded to beat him bloody.

All this emerged at Andrzejewski’s jury trial, on charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement.

Yes, that’s right – police charged the senior citizen. He was acquitted, but not before he’d spent 75 days in jail. He has no family in Canada, no one to raise a ruckus on his behalf. He rotted behind bars until the system eventually got around to spitting him out. Ottawa police, sounding mildly chastened, have promised a “full and complete” investigation.

Ah well. that’s OK then. Mistakes happen, eh?

Or take Ian Thomson’s story. Thomson, you may recall, is the Port Colborne, Ont. man who awoke early one morning in August of 2010 to find three men peppering his house with Molotov cocktails. A Molotov cocktail is a jar or bottle filled with gasoline, fitted with a makeshift fuse, set alight and tossed. They tend to explode and burn things down.

Mr. Thomson, a gun owner and former firearms safety trainer, rushed to his gun safe, unlocked it, withdrew a revolver, loaded it, and went outside in his skivvies to confront the bombers. He fired three warning shots, after which they fled. No one was injured.

See where this is headed? Mr. Thomson was not awarded a medal for bravery or asked to star in his own reality show. He was charged with careless storage of a firearm. His case is still before the courts.

Many will know the story of David Chen, owner of the Lucky Moose convenience store in Toronto, who captured and tied up a thief who’d repeatedly looted his store. Police charged the thief, but also charged Mr. Chen with assault and forcible confinement. He was acquitted, amid widespread incredulity that he was even in court.

That case prompted the Harper government to draft the Lucky Moose law, now Bill C-26 – essentially a streamlining of existing Criminal Code provisions defining what Canadians can legally do to protect their person or property from attack or robbery. Here’s the short-form version: You can use reasonable force. What constitutes reasonable? Er, that depends.

Hence, the problem: Even under C-26, admittedly an improvement over the current hodgepodge, it’s a judgment call. Yet police and prosecutors seem to, with alarming regularity, employ poor judgment. Granted, juries repeatedly toss these cases out of court. But that doesn’t account for the anguish, aggravation and cost suffered between arrest and acquittal.

So, a suggestion, humbly offered to the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs: Once C-26 comes into effect, how about ensuring that all your members, and the prosecutors with whom they work, give it a good read?

Canadians do not have the right to bear arms. Nor are homeowners in this country protected by the so-called castle doctrine, which allows Americans to use lethal force in protecting their property.

But just like anyone else on the planet, Canadians do have an inherent, natural human right to defend self, family and home, when these are violated. The legal benefit of the doubt should favour the person victimized, not their victimizer. This is obvious to every reasonable person.

Why isn’t it obvious to every police officer and prosecutor in the land?